This is the month of remakes, whether you’re after the adventure of Ghostbusters or the thrill of The Matrix, it’s time to go on a nostalgia-fest. December delivers some amazing movies that are worth watching in the cinema. So here’s our pick of the top three films to watch in Riyadh this month.
Ghostbusters: From Beyond
Who you gonna call? Well, not the Ghostbusters because – spoiler alert – they’re all old or dead. That must be why this latest entry in the ghouls-and-guns series takes place in a town overrun with ghosts. Uh oh. At least it’s 12,000km away from Riyadh. In no way narratively linked to the 2016 film (the with an all-female team), this is a direct relative to the first movies from the ’80s. Except that this one is set in the present and concerns the kids of OG Ghostbuster Egon Spengler, who has passed away (maybe he’s also a ghost!). Are you keeping up? Just try to keep in mind that this film is predominantly concerned with a) ghosts and b) busting.
This has a canny premise, in that the younger characters know nothing about the Ghostbusters, which means that fans of the original can revel in watching this new generation discover it for the first time. Such a discovery can only mean that an avalanche of paranormal activity is approaching. It comes from underground, before exploding in all directions: unfriendly dogs, giant running beasts, zombies, and, naturally, a floating green squealing blob. As with every reboot, this is a huge risk: it’s certain to make money, but trying to recapture that original spark is never guaranteed.
Out December 2.
The King’s Man
Do you miss Pierce Brosnan’s later Bond performances? All that cringe-encrusted quipping and borderline silliness? He had an invisible car. Daniel Craig’s 007 would never entertain driving such a silly car. It’s this hammy spy vacuum that Matthew Vaughn’s Kingsman films enthusiastically fill: there are canes with swords hidden inside them, gun-toting women with thick Yorkshire accents who swear profusely, and baddies played by actors like Rhys Ifans who talk about their private parts at posh parties.
But unlike, say, Johnny English (Rowan Atkinson’s Bond parody), the Kingsman movies play the action and fight scenes thrillingly straight – Vaughn also directed Layer Cake and X Men: First Class, after all. This third instalment is a prequel and set in the early 1900s, which means Colin Firth’s Harry Hart character doesn’t feature, nor Taron Egerton’s Eggsy. Instead, there’s a whole new set of spies, headed up by Ralph Fiennes as the Duke of Oxford. That’s right, prepare to watch an English actor in his 50s scrapping, shooting, and smacking his way across a film set – this film really is gunning for the old-school Bond audience.
Out December 30.
The Matrix Resurrections
The Matrix is 22 years old, but its influence remains very much in the present. For starters, it launched ‘bullet time’ visual. Then it kicked off a new generation of darker, edgier, and more substantial action movie blockbusters. Something else to emerge has been popular culture’s absorption of the red pill/blue pill decision: do you want to be red and real woke, or blue and blissfully ignorant?
The Matrix’s red pill trope was eventually appropriated by alt-right movements, then sparked a Twitter squabble between Lilly Wachowski, Elon Musk, and Ivanka Trump; it doesn’t get more present-day than that. All of this means that there’s quite a lot riding on this fourth film, because The Matrix universe is characteristically disruptive. Many of The Matrix ingredients are in place, from martial arts and bullet swerving, to black cats and wobbly walls. Carrie-Anne Moss’s Trinity also returns, but her and Neo don’t know each other. Or do they?
Out December 23.
